If there is a place full of mystery in the tenerife islandthat without a doubt, is the Barranco de Badajoz. Located in the municipality of Guimaris a wild place visited by athletes dedicated to the speleology, hikers and endless onlookers who reach at least as far as the place where an old gallery from which water was extracted remains closed; between kicking and kicking, hundreds of people end up arriving throughout the year in this magical place, either when the sun is still shining high in the sky or when it sets and the abrupt orography recovers other meanings. who want hiking You should know that the route has a total distance of about six kilometers, there and back, and its level is not very complicated, but there are narrow passes and the end of the path reaches a mound of stones on a wall, which you have to overcome in order to ” climb” -some speleologists have left their nails there-. The ravine is included in the Protected Landscape of Las Siete Lomas, classified as Protected Natural Area of the Canary Islands.
The Cañizo Cave
It is a ravine that was populated by the Guanches -that they called him Chamoco ravine– before the conquest by the Castilla’s crown and in some of its caves, such as the famous Cueva del Cañizo, it is where the aura of mystery almost begins to emerge from this canyon that begins to open up in Las Cañadas del Teide and comes to an end on the outskirts of the Güímar valley.
Almost 100 meters high is Cueva del Cañizo owes its name to twelve rods of cane that are placed on the top of the roof and that can be seen from the bed of the ravine. The difficult access that this place has has not allowed to carry out in-depth studies. The reeds could well have been used to dry foods such as meat or cheese. Little is known about it, although there are stories that indicate it as a summer stay of the Mencey Acaymo and after his son añaterve. Perhaps it was so, or as he points out Francisco Remedios Acosta The cave could have been used by the Guanches to carry out ritual practices: “It consists of placing wooden crossbars (reeds) at the top of the cave. The corpse would be placed on top of the wood so that it could be slaughtered by birds (guirres), in this way the body of the deceased was transported to the afterlife” . In the XIX century, Sabinus of Berthelot mention the the “gymnastic fights” of the aborigines and among those duels one stands out: “Of all the feats, the most daring consisted of climbing the almost inaccessible escarpments, to plant huge wooden poles on them, which they left fixed on the cliff as honorable souvenirs.” The Cueva del Cañizo is so difficult to access that it can only be accessed by rappelling from the top of the ravine wall, and even then it is quite complicated.
The water galleries
Since the 19th century, various galleries have been excavated to search for the filtered water in the rocks. This much-needed good on the island is essential for the supply of crops located in the midlands and the coast of the municipality of Güímar. In total, seven galleries were excavated: Izaña, Acaymo, El Almagre, Chamoco, Aceviño, Our Lady of Help, El Cañizo. In these galleries, a total of more than 14,930 meters have been excavated, without counting the extension of the Izaña, whose exact length is not known to this day.
The gallery of Acaymo, also known as Black Cave, it can be located under the so-called child’s face, and has a length of 1,975 meters. The gallery of El Almagre It is the first of those found on the right side of the Badajoz Ravine and its length is 2,900 meters. In front of this gallery, on the other side of the ravine, there is a cone of ejection inside which we find the Chamoco gallery, which is the most hidden gallery in this ravine and with its 4,086 meters in length it would be the longest, although the extension of the Izaña gallery is unknown. The Aceviño gallery is 2,275 meters long, on both sides of its entrance there are buildings that served as accommodation for the operators as well as to house the machines and material necessary to carry out their work. The gallery of Our Lady of Help measures 1,879 meters. The gallery of El Cañizo It owes its name to the Cueva del Cañizo that is located right in front of it. With a length of 1,815 meters, it is the shortest gallery in the Barranco de Badajoz. It was closed due to a terrible danger in which several accidents occurred, since in addition to the gases or landslides, it has a well in the middle of the road into which it would not be difficult to fall. The Izana’s gallery excavation began in 1912 and is the oldest of all. Its exact length is unknown since after finishing the official excavations other excavations were carried out – let’s say legal ones – and the works extended over several branches. It has suffered several landslides, such as those produced after the heavy rains of 2002, so it is risky to venture inside to record its extent.
The Abysses of the Badajoz Ravine
Legend has it that one fine day the gallery workers abandoned their work tools, their homes and, without looking back, fled the place. Why? What was the event that drove them away from their work, the only means they had to survive?
Not a few have been mystery researchers who have tried to solve these questions. The elders of the place say that in 1912, dThe miners who were trying unsuccessfully to find a viable gallery collapsed a wall where they ran into two wonderful beings of light. Thus, one of the legends tells that these beings invited them to accompany them and indicated an ideal place to dig. Another version, on the contrary, affirms that fear seized them and they escaped from there to look for the Civil Guard and denounce what had happened to them. However, there are no documents that corroborate that they fled and went to the police station to denounce; The reality is that, since the escape, no one has dared to live in the Barranco de Badajoz.
Although the galleries were abandoned, water continues to be extracted as well as stories of mysteries continue to bubble around this place. And light is the common denominator, since the beings of light have been succeeded by spheres of white light that take over the cold of the night and that despite this makes the atmosphere pleasant, warm.
A door to another dimension
The Barranco de Badajoz also has a “door to another dimension“. This is at least what some avid expeditionaries of the mystery recounted and who assured that “some winged beings came to welcome them”. who was shooting his camera, captured a snapshot of a supposed creepy being. Years later, Bermejo returned to the ravine to get more images: on that occasion he managed to photograph the well-known white light spheres who danced among the vegetation of the ravine.
Those who have dared to spend a night in the bowels of the Badajoz Ravine, most of them skeptical, usually confirm the next day that they have not spent the evening alone: they hear the murmurs of men and women conversing in an unintelligible way, voices coming out of the walls of the ravine and that seem to remove the stones from the interior of the Earth itself.
The girl of the pears
the legend of the Pear Girl It is one of the most popular and at the same time it is also the one that has undergone the most transformations over time. According to the references, this legend arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, specifically between 1890 and 1910. And it reads like this: “Some parents sent their daughter to the Barranco de Badajoz in search of fruit, but the girl disappeared. The area was meticulously searched by the residents of Güímar, but the girl did not appear. At least he didn’t immediately. To the surprise of her parents, the girl knocked on the door of her house several decades later, her parents had aged, but she did not. At the door of the house there she was, looking the same as she had the day she disappeared.
What the girl recounted after her appearance was that she had gone to the ravine for the fruit her parents had told her to pick, but exhausted she fell asleep at the foot of a pear tree, where she was later awakened by a very tall being dressed in white. Far from being scared, that being inspired him with confidence and he agreed to accompany him as he had requested. The girl followed that strange being into a cave where there were stairs through which they descended. At the end of the descent they found themselves in a garden where there were more beings like the one who had led her there, all dressed in white. For the girl, she only spent a few minutes talking with them until her strange companion led her back to the exit of the cave and said goodbye to her. For her, only a short period of time had passed, but for her parents, 20 years had passed.
